China’s consumer inflation slowed in November on lower food prices, official data showed on Saturday.

The annual consumer price index (CPI) increased 1.7 percent in November from a year earlier, compared with a 1.9 percent gain in October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

Food prices in November fell 1.1 percent year on year, marking the 10th-straight month decline, after dropping 0.4 percent in October. 

Nonfood prices grew 2.5 percent on year, slightly up from a  2.4 percent on-year growth in October.

On a month-over-month basis, the CPI was unchanged in November, and the index in October rose 0.1 percent from September.

The producer price index (PPI)  in November rose 5.8 percent year on year, slowing from 6.9 percent in October, the NBS said on Saturday. 

“Slowing inflation helps ease concerns on tighter monetary policy,” Tommy Xie, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp in Singapore, told Bloomberg. “The CPI drop was mostly driven by the decline in food prices, while PPI fell because the base last year was too high. I expect consumer inflation to remain largely stable and fluctuate around 2 percent in the coming year, while the growth of PPI will very likely fall below 5 percent in December.”

“Easing of inflation is probably something policy makers are willing to see, as this suggests China isn’t under pressure to boost interest rates,” said Xia Le, chief Asia economist at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA in Hong Kong." As now stricter financial regulation dominates the market sentiment, the authorities may not hope to also increase borrowing costs with tighter monetary policies."